X-Wing Miniatures- Millennium Falcon Tactics
It’s time to take a look at the “Fastest Hunk of Junk in the galaxy” – the YT-1300. “Never tell me the odds!” – Han Solo
I was lucky enough to get my hands on one in a game of Sacbac with some smuggler looking dude in a cantina in some outer rim planet. So, lets take a look at this powerful and possibly the most popular ship in Star Wars.
First thing you’ll notice when you grab this model is its huge. It dwarfs the other models with ease and because of this its is own ship type, known as Large Ships, which come with their own special rules. Which are pretty short actually, First off when hit with an Ion Cannon, you’re too big to be effected at first.
Bigger ships would require two hits before they would be effected, so that’s pretty nice huh? Other then that it follows the same overlapping rules as anything else, and in the end it’s just a much bigger ship. This also gives you a bigger range, but puts you in range of enemy ships easier too. However it does get some new card upgrades known as Co-pilots and Ship Upgrades.
The Falcon comes with four different pilot cards, a pilot skill 9 Han Solo, a skill 7 Lando Calrissian, a skill 5 Chewbacca and skill 1 Outer Rim Smuggler. Each pilot has their fun little abilities as pictured below.
The new bigger ships come with the new card type Co-pilots which give some very fun abilities to make a strong ship stronger. You’ll find four in this set, consisting of a Weapons Engineer, Luke Skywalker, Nien Nunb, and Chewbacca. Each have some powerful abilities and can change the way you’ll be playing the ship.
Another new card type are the Ship Upgrades which are extremely powerful and awesome in my honest opinion. Each can be placed upon any ship, ANY SHIP in the game! But only one per ship, so no building your big shinies.
Two types find themselves in the Falcon, a Engine Upgrade, which gives you the brand spanking new Boost Action. And Shield Upgrade, which gives you a permanent shield, which in itself is nice, but just couple that with R2-D2 and oh yess!
And to round it up you get some new Experience Pilot cards and a few new Missiles as well. All in all I’d say its worth the buy for all the goodies you get alone.
Now my thoughts on the ship. Frankly, I love it. I find it extremely powerful and to be honest with you as it stands anyone with it using it has a nice advantage over other players. I’ve heard cries from the mountain tops that this ship actually sucks, but I’ll have to disagree with them and just say they’re doing it wrong.
Least, that’s how it sounds to me. Many people think its a tank, but while it can in fact take a ton of damage, it isn’t a real good tank. With One agility it isn’t going to dodge much sustained fire, but in it’s defense with a One point upgrade to turn the ship into the actual Millennium Falcon (its normally just a YT-1300) you can get it an Evade action on your action bar.
My suggestions to play it is to take it slow first few rounds barely going forward. Unload some missiles on some ships and when they get all nice and close, ZOOM RIGHT PAST THEM AND FIRE AT THEIR REAR!
Now zoom past I mean just go past, no U-ies here. This baby has a extremely powerful weapon on it. You know those lovely Ion turrets you can get on Y-wings and that super awesome 360 degree of fire? Yea, Falcons got that. And without the downfall of ‘only 1 damage!’ So you can easily keep this ship in the enemy blind spots and blast at them without fear of retribution.
The pilots though I’ll admit are a little lack luster in their abilities. Also they tend to have a extremely high cost to them, so break out your piggy banks of points to get them on your teams.
Han doesn’t seem all that worth it. His reroll when attacking is nice, but you have to reroll every single die, so it can screw you over perhaps. Maybe if they had it so it would be reroll all dice for whatever you had to roll dice for, but I’ll admit that does come off as a bit broken.
Also his very high point cost at 46 points means you wont have to much room to bring much else. Lando seems a bit better but given the size of the ship, its a tiny bit hard to keep him in any formation without some mistakes happening.
Chewbacca in my opinion is the best pilot for the falcon out of the named bunch just for his ability to negate all crits. With him the Falcon really does become a tank, requiring you to go through every single hull point. Finally, the smuggler is kinda weak. His stats compared to the others are all lower for the most part. One less attack, hull point and shield seems bad, BUT, the fact he’s only 27 points is pretty good.
The co-pilots are extremely nice. My suggestion is taking Nien Nunb to make all straight forward maneuvers green so you can stress out the Falcon and then easily fix it without having to slow down much. Weapons Engineer is great for doing a bombardment real quick, or some cheeky fun later. Chewbacca again is real nice, preventing one crit and Luke. Luke…I’m still not sure how he works. The wording is a little confusing to me so I don’t know if it means if I use him I stop all other attacks, or something else that’s kind of lost to me. Either or, 7 points for him will make your ship slightly expensive.
My suggestions to run this baby though is in normal point games to take the smuggler with Nien Nunb. 28 points for a 360 firing ship that can make any forward maneuver with ease. Not too bad. Add a Shield Upgrade for 4 points to make it a bit more survivable as well as the other 1 point upgrade to make the Falcon and you have a not to bad ship. Higher Points change it up to Chewbacca and throw on a Weapons Engineer and some Assault Missiles (new with this set!). 56 points, but that’s 56 points of POWA!
I would say for the price you get the bang for your buck and the Millennium Falcon will be a great addition to your Fleet.
Welcome to X-Wing. Enjoy your stay. Be sure to checkout our sweet video intro for the X-Wing starter set box and game below, and our other Star Wars Tactics Articles.
